Yes, she said this. This statement, the statement she makes about needing help after one of her long slumbers, and people help her "but for different reasons" and her whole relationship with Hakan are what took me into a whole ROAD CLOSED line of speculation regarding her "not normal" relationships she may have had. She says so d%#n little about her past that we can't really say much with any real confidence one way or another, but we can say she's not had a "normal" relationship in two hundred years, and that her recent cohabitation with Hakan was very far from anything we'd accept for a more normal child.Wolfchild wrote:Since this is the film section, I take "Canon" to mean "what we were shown on the screen" and in that case I agree. However, if "Canon" were to include the novel, then you would be incorrect. In the novel, Eli says flat out that he hasn't had a normal friendship in two hundred years.sauvin wrote:How many other times in her long past has she been willing to risk entering a residence uninvited? Has she ever trusted to this extent before? Nothing in Canon suggests it (or flatly denies it, either), and we're left with a strong feeling that she hasn't.
If you persist in claiming I'm incorrect, I'll accept it because I don't remember the novel well, but even if so, the questions I ask remain valid: had she ever trusted to this extent before? Had she ever been willing to risk entering another person's residence uninvited before, once having learned (presumably the hard way) what happens? Nothing in Canon suggests it - we can agree on this, I think - but nothing that I remember flatly denies it, either.
You posted an analysis of the whole exchange between Eli and Hakan as she wheedles and pleads for Hakan to do the food shopping. I don't remember it well, either, but seem to recall that you had painted up Hakan convincingly in a very selfishly manipulative light, and you had Eli trying to grapple with the whole concept of human relationships and of what love even is. Even if you didn't go this far, I will: Eli didn't have a freaking clue.
If she had had previous relationships of the Hakan brand, but with an oilier, more persuasive human monster, might she not have allowed herself to be deceived enough to believe his lies, to tell herself desperately that she did trust him enough for such a risk?
She's a child before she's a vampire, and a child she remains even after she barks, and human children can and do lie to themselves about the people they depend on. They may be young and inexperienced, but they're not idiots (contrary to popular opinion); they know very well their continued survival and well-being is contingent on their ingratiating themselves with their guardians and providers. We might claim that a couple centuries' experience would have taught her the folly of trusting without merit, but this whole exchange you analysed carried with it an element of precisely this: Eli looking for some means of feeling she can rely on her minder.
I really don't think so. My Eli is enough the predator, has been the essential predator since a matter of months or maybe a few years at the outside, that the very idea of trusting one of her bought and kept men constitutes for her an even bigger flashing neon ROAD CLOSED sign. Beyond this sign is the road to true death, but it seems to me we have to believe the possibility, however slim, does exist.
The difference between her confidence in Hakan and her implicit trust in Oskar? Not even a question. I would also say that "no friends = no trust", but I'll furthermore say that this isn't necessarily the kind of knowledge we pass on genetically to our children; it something we learn, sometimes more than once, and sometimes to great cost. Experience can be the harshest of schoolmasters, and the possibility of betrayal one of the bitterest lessons.Wolfchild wrote:However, in the film, Lina's portrayal of Eli strongly hints that Eli is unsure of what to do with this relationship with Oskar. When she comes back from taking a shower, she seems very obviously to not know what to do next. She is not used to visiting someone else's home. This would imply what Eli states explicitly in the novel: Eli is not at accustomed to having friends. I would say that no friends = no trust.
This may be a stretch, but I would aver that the film shows Eli trusting Oskar more than she trusted Håkan. When Eli travels with Håkan, it is at night when she can sit beside him in the cab. However, she trusts Oskar enough that she is willing to travel with him during the day, even though it forces her to hide helplessly in the box. For Eli, that must feel precarious in the extreme.
The symbolism of the egg itself has been covered elsewhere (short story: she was "saying" the shell she'd been living in has crumbled, and she's showing Oskar her golden core), but here's where the "wedding ceremony" has ended and the "honeymoon" has begun: I've also jokingly skated kinda close to the ROAD CLOSED sign, close enough to wipe the dust off it, when I flippantly said "she told him to put his finger in her egg, so, he did!"
